One of the longest and most interesting stories of 2020 has been the slow appearance of a ton of confidential historical data. contained within some great Nintendo leaks. Another round of things stemming from this data spill landed over the weekend, and it covers everything from Super mario 64 to Star fox 2 to The world of Super Mario.
Where to start How about the canceled and never released for SNES (although at least we could see it later) Star fox 2, whose leaks go as far as to include the game’s source code, surprising as few as Dylan Cuthbert, the game’s main developer:
And what about some character prototypes?
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Let’s go back to the 1992 years Super mario kart now whose placeholder menu music bops.
There are also some The world of Super Mario stuff there, about a year after its launch in 1990, none of which is more fun than this:
To get better….
Although this evolution of Yoshi’s design is approaching:
Good legs, Bowser:
While on the subject of Super Mario Bros., here is a prototype construction from 1995 Yoshi Island for the SNES … where the game is called Super Mario Bros. 5: Yoshi’s Island:
And that’s just the SNES thing! Perhaps most interesting of all this (at least at this time) is the presence of some Luigi textures in Mario 1996. Super mario 64, apparently confirming one of the oldest myths in video game history (especially since leaked information, dated 1995, calls the game Ultra 64 Mario Brothers):
There also seem to be files related to Ura, a planned Ocarina of time expansion for the Nintendo 64DD add-on that was never released:
Everything you see here, and it’s just a selection, as there’s so much more out there as you read this, it’s just scratching the surface. The original leaks that led to both the May and this weekend disclosures contained terabytes of data, and it takes people forever to analyze it all, especially since much of it is stored in bland folders organized in a way that would only make sense to someone who was a programmer at Nintendo in the 90s.
But for now, this is still a pretty interesting selection of things! And as the discoveries rapidly approach, we’ll probably have a lot more to share in the coming days / weeks as well.
However, as we do, it is probably important to note that the disclosure of all this information is not without controversy. While it’s fascinating that we get a chance to see all sorts of unplanned and unpublished data, from the notoriously secret Nintendo, from all companies! – The fact is that the source code and other assets remain the property of Nintendo. There’s also the fact that, along with the music, models, and levels, there is some code, documentation, and correspondence that is private and even contains personal information.
Something Dylan Cuthbert, who’s been answering all kinds of questions raised by the leaks over the weekend, has sometimes asked. Talking to some users asking about Star Fox 2’s leak source, reminds them “However, the source code is a little different than the rom or the resulting assets, for my bits I personally wrote each letter and symbol, etc., is your journal released for public release after five years?”
So as you (and we!) Enjoyed reviewing all of this, keep in mind that much of it was never supposed to be seen by the public.
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